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Q & A with Erik Lukens, Editor of The Bulletin
Last summer you left your position as editorial page editor of The Oregonian to become the editor of The Bulletin in Bend. Why?
By the time I left The Oregonian, I'd spent 17 years as an editorial page editor, first at The Bulletin and then, beginning in 2012, at The Oregonian. I loved the work and had great colleagues, but I was just ready for a new challenge. The prospect of overseeing a newsroom with 50 or so people for the first time was daunting, but I was very familiar with Bend. I'd known the owners, who are from Bend, for years and valued their commitment to good journalism. Meanwhile, the publisher, John Costa, preceded me as editor and hired me in 1998. You won't find better circumstances to take a mid-career risk.
Besides, I still get to write. I have a weekly column.
Tony Baker, editor and publisher of the Register Guard, recently said in this newsletter: "It's stating the obvious, but newspapering is indeed a tough business anymore. There's no manual to follow to help us with the inevitable but terribly disruptive transformation from a print-centric business model to operating in the frantic, ever-evolving digital space. No one has perfected a sustainable business model for producing, selling and marketing our journalism in a digital-only world."
What's your reaction to Tony Baker's pragmatic but somewhat pessimistic view of the future of newspapers? Do you think newspapers in midsize cities such as Eugene's Register-Guard or The Bulletin have a better chance of survival than The Oregonian? If so, why?
Well, he's certainly right that newspapering is tough these days. He's also right about the absence of a manual to help negotiate the digital evolution of the business. But we're not totally blind. There's a lot of experimentation happening, and this has generated plenty of examples of things to avoid online and things worth trying. If there's one lesson I've learned, though, it's that we need to focus on maintaining the quality of the print product even as we look for ways to do our work and make money online.
Do I think that papers in midsize cities like Bend have a better shot than The Oregonian, owing to its location in a larger city? I really don't know, but I think survival for all of us will depend on our ability to remind readers why we matter and are, therefore, worth reading and buying. That, to me, means providing something that others are not: credible journalism that addresses the needs and interests of readers. I hope that will be enough. If we need an unending succession of kitten and puppy photo galleries to keep the doors open, we're doomed.
News Corp CEO Robert Thomson wrote in his recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Fake News and the Digital Duopoly, "Google and Facebook have close to two-thirds of the digital advertising market ? [[and] accounted for more than 90 percent of the incremental increase in digital advertising over the past year."
Thomson argues, "It is beyond risible that Google and its subsidiary, YouTube, which have earned billions of dollars from other people's content, should now be lamenting that they can't possibly be held responsible for monitoring that content."
What are your thoughts about billions of advertising dollars being directed to unaccredited, frequently inaccurate news sources that exercise little or zero editorial control?
Click on a Wall Street Journal story, and you'll see that it's accompanied by a column of icons. The one on the very top encourages readers to share that story on Facebook. Because of the incredible reach offered by Facebook and Google, newspaper people feel compelled to work with the very businesses that are hoovering up advertising revenue, contributing to the debasement of civic discourse (especially Facebook) and helping to erode public faith in journalism. You can see why Thomson is so angry.
We in the newspaper business deserve responsibility for some of the problems Thomson outlines. By giving away work that costs a lot of money to produce, we've encouraged online readers to expect free access. The digital revenue we generate just isn't enough to support our misplaced generosity. Instead, Facebook and Google are making a lot of money on expensive work they don't have to support.
As this is happening, the vetted and edited work of newspapers gets jumbled up in people's Facebook feeds, for instance, with inaccurate "fake news" garbage. I don't know what that does for the credibility of the mainstream news business, but I doubt it's anything good. To combat this, I think some education ? by Facebook, Google or whoever ? designedned to encourage savvy media consumption makes sense. But the Orwellian possibilities Thomson warns about are worrisome, too. Do we really want algorithms or staffers at Facebook and Google deciding what constitutes "real" news and "fake" news? I sure don't.
What do I think about the billions of advertising dollars directed to inaccurate news sources that exercise little or no editorial control? Well, as a person who works for a news organization that exercises tight editorial control and values accuracy, I don't like it. But it's a free country, and advertisers get to spend money as they see fit. Our industry needs to continue making the case that advertisers are better off associating themselves with us. And not just online. Print isn't pushing up daisies yet.
Recently the Wall Street Journal outed Swedish comedian and YouTuber Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, known as PewDiePie, over allegations of anti-Semitism in several of PewDiePie's videos. Despite PewDiePie's 54 million YouTube subscribers, Disney cut ties with the Swedish comedian, and the second season of his YouTube Red show was cancelled.
PewDiePie and his audience were outraged by the WSJ's report, claiming his jokes were taken out of context. In an 11-minute harangue he said, "I'm still here. I'm still making videos. Try again, motherf**kers ? Old school media does not like the internet personalities because they are scared of us."
As a member of "old school media," who is right here? The WSJ ? outing his content for what it is, poliitical commentary with questionable taste, or PewDiePie ? outing thee old guard as paranoid and defensive about the changing media world?
I'm not sure "outing" is the best description of what happened, as content that's accessed by millions and millions of people is already out there. But I get the point. Disney, which was Kjellberg's business partner, was perfectly happy to make a whole bunch of money from edgy, even anti-Semitic, content in a (large) corner of the Internet until the Journal brought it to the attention of people who'd never heard of PewDiePie. At that point, everyone was reminded that businesses care deeply about their reputations.
I don't buy Kjellberg's argument that old school media organizations are afraid of internet personalities like him. PewDiePie and Peggy Noonan are speaking to very different people. Not a lot of overlap there.
But he's not entirely wrong. I suspect more than a few people at the Journal took some pleasure in highlighting the reputational risk businesses and potential advertisers take when they dive into the internet swamp.
Thomson also commented on the ethics of YouTube advertising on online quasi-news sites: "As the Times of London has reported, socially aware, image conscious advertisers find themselves in extremely disreputable places ? hardcore porn sites, neofascist sites, Islamist ssites ? It is estimated by the ad industry that a YouTube partner coould earn about 55% of the revenue from a video."
What's your reaction to the explosion of non-sourced news sites funded by YouTube and Facebook advertisers? Do you think a culture of internet news with journalistic accountability and accuracy has a chance to emerge to counter sources spreading "fake" and/or malicious news? Or is that mixing apples and oranges?
I'm not at all optimistic here. You're asking about the emergence of a culture of internet news with journalistic accountability and accuracy. The internet already is well populated with the sort of news content you mention thanks to traditional and various new media organizations. So, to some degree, that culture already exists. But I've seen no evidence that popular culture will suddenly, or even gradually, come to appreciate the differences between fake/malicious news and what the New York Times produces. And YouTube and Facebook are pop-culture vehicles. You might as well hope that lions take up veganism.
President Trump has famously attacked what he refers to as "fake news" coming from the country's old guard traditional media sources ? AP, CNN, the Washington Post, tthe New York Times, etc. Does the president have a point? Did the media have this coming?
It did. I'm not a Trump fan and voted for Clinton, but the outcome of the election underscored how much his candidacy resonated with millions of people who felt ignored by Democrats. It also underscored just how thoroughly most traditional media organizations missed this story and therefore underestimated Trump's appeal. The Washington Post, New York Times and other organizations continue to do great work, but they weren't paying enough attention to fly-over country. And let's be honest, most people in traditional media don't like Trump. And it showed.
So put yourself in Trump's place, or in the place of one of his supporters. First, major media organizations missed an important part of the story leading up to the election, even as they focused relentlessly on Trump's many flaws. And when he won, people started pointing to "fake news" as one of the reasons he did. The term is politicized, and it's easy to understand the impulse to throw it back in the faces of fallible and hostile media organizations when the chance arises.
In 2014, you won a Pulitzer Prize for a series on the problems facing Oregon's Public Employees Retirement System. What confidence do you have that Gov. Brown will provide the necessary leadership to solve the PERS crisis? Do you think Phil Knight was right when he remarked in last month's issue that "left unchecked, PERS will simply sink the state"?
I've seen no evidence that Gov. Brown has the leadership skills needed to solve the PERS crisis, but that's irrelevant. Leadership matters only if you intend to do something about the problem, and so far she's shown no interest in that. Instead, she's pointed to the 2015 Supreme Court decision on the 2013 PERS reforms and suggested that nothing new can be done. In the meantime, she urged people last year to vote for Measure 97, a huge tax increase supported by public employee unions that would have papered over the PERS problem. We all know how that went.
I don't agree with Knight, though. PERS isn't going to sink the state, but it will continue to create significant problems. The more money public agencies have to devote to retirement, the less they'll have to do other things like hiring teachers. PERS will continue to erode the quality of public education in Oregon, and PERS beneficiaries and allied lawmakers will continue to try to shift the blame to corporations and wealthy people in pursuit of higher taxes.
As chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Cong. Greg Walden has been getting rough pushback from the media on the west side of the mountains, particularly The Oregonian and Portland Business Journal, over his role in attempting to repeal Obamacare. One Business Journal headline read, "Inside Congressman Greg Walden's rise to power and how he could lose it." The story tried to paint a scenario where Walden's seat was at risk, despite winning his most recent election with 72 percent of the vote. Do you think this reporting on Rep. Walden's work with the Trump Administration has been fair, accurate? What does the perspective look like from your side of the mountains?
I confess that I haven't followed The Oregonian's work on Walden exhaustively, and I haven't read the Business Journal piece. I tried to get it online but was thwarted by a pay wall (good for them!). So I can't say whether the coverage has been fair.
But I have read plenty of other work from other sources, including the New York Times. I haven't run across anything I would consider unfair, but a lot of coverage has focused on one of the ironies of Walden's position. Here's this guy who's opposed the ACA, won his district time and again, and is now in a position to rewrite the law. Yet his district has benefited enormously from the ACA's expansion of health coverage. How does he roll back the ACA without hurting the very people who put him in office ... to, among other things, roll back the ACA?
His position is certainly a somewhat difficult one, and perhaps I'm being overly simplistic and too harsh. But there seems to be an "aren't voters dumb?" subtext at work in at least some of this coverage. To the extent that it exists, this subtext is more unfair to Walden voters than it is to Walden himself. Whatever voters may or may not know about the ACA, the consequences of a roll-back and so on, I think it's a mistake to assume that voting is merely a transactional exercise. I think people vote in the way they do for a lot of reasons, and the fate of the ACA is only one of them.
The perspective on this side of the mountains is certainly different than it is in Portland, though it's worth noting that the city of Bend leans further to the left than most of the rest of Walden's district. Drive outside of Bend, though, and you'll still see plenty of Trump signs on fences. I don't expect Walden even to come close to losing next year.
In one of the recent Oregonian articles on Walden, one of the story's "researchers" has a recent work history that includes years of service to a high-ranking Massachusetts Democrat. Here in Oregon, even including Gov. Tom McCall, it's common for "journalists" to flip back and forth from journalism to politics. But this kind of activist journalist has created news media that the public no longer trusts.
What has happened to journalism as a career and profession? Do the modern economics of the profession make it an impossible choice for millennials unless tied to political ideology and activism? Who can the public trust for "real news"?
I do worry that smart, young people will steer clear of journalism out of fear. I have to say, though, there are plenty of smart, young people in The Bulletin's newsroom and in newsrooms all over Oregon, and they are really committed to what they do. I think what draws them to journalism is the knowledge that what they're doing really matters. This is a job with purpose, and that can make up for a lot ? lower pay and skimpiier benefits than your buddy who flacks for the city, the school district or the county; covering night meetings; calls at home from the copy desk, etc.
Still, the sense of purpose that characterizes most newspaper folks can bleed over into activism. That's great on the editorial page, but it does erode your credibility when it pops up elsewhere in the paper. And I don't think papers have done themselves any favors by creating beats that both encourage reporter activism and suggest to readers that reporter activism is tolerated outside of the editorial page. The ubiquitous "environment" beat is a problem, in my opinion. You can cover the same issues just as effectively through other beats without suggesting to readers (often correctly) that it's really the "environmentalism" beat.
I don't think that the modern economics of the profession make it an impossible choice for millennials unless tied to political ideology or activism. Everybody cares about something, and I think young reporters are eager to learn how to do the job well, which means how to do it in a way that fosters trust. That's where editors come in.
Who can the public trust for real news? Newspapers, of course.
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